Israel has two terrorism problems. The first is the religious-authoritarian threat posed by the Islamist group, Hamas. The irony is that Hamas is in good part a creation of Israel.

An offshoot of the (Egypt-based) Islamic Brotherhood in the 1970s, the group really began to grow the 1980s when Israel began to back Hamas — including financially — as a counterweight to the leftist, secular Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). (PLO head Yasser Arafat referred to Hamas as a “creature of Israel.”) In 1988, the PLO renounced terrorism, while Hamas has never formally renounced it. Since the PLO renouncement, PLO splinter groups have continued to engage in terrorism, though not on the level of Hamas.

This Israeli backing of Hamas is, of course, reminiscent of Ronald Reagan’s cynical support of the most hardline Islamist elements in Afghanistan in the 1980s during the uprising against the Soviet-backed Afghan government and the Soviet forces propping it up. That U.S. involvement in Afghanistan in the 1980s created horrific blowback: the creation of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. Similarly, Israel is now suffering blowback from its support of Hamas in the 1980s.

It’s worth noting that while both the American and Israeli people have suffered as a result of their governments’ backing of radical Islamist groups, the extreme right governments in both countries have profited handsomely from the terrorism they supply. Terrorism on even a small scale provides both the U.S. and Israeli governments with an ideal means of frightening the public, an ideal excuse for mass surveillance, restriction of civil liberties, intimidation of critics, and all manner of horrifying, brutal acts, including the murder of civilians.

Thus, Hamas’, Al-Qaeda’s, and the Taliban’s terrorism serves the interest of the ruling rightist elites in both Israel and the United States. (This is not to imply that Hamas is as bad as Al-Qaeda or the Taliban: it isn’t. It’s not even in the same ballpark.) At the same time, it serves the interests of the terrorist groups themselves.

How? It provokes (more accurately, supplies cover for) disproportionate, violent responses, often targeting civilians. This not only fuels popular anger, helping to ensure a steady supply of recruits for the terrorist groups, but it greatly discourages popular involvement in other forms of politics. One would have to have, for example, great courage to engage in civil disobedience in Afghanistan. To put this another way, terrorism tends to reduce everyday people to powerless, terrorized spectators, standing on the sidelines (when they’re not being shot or bombed “accidentally”) while the authoritarian terrorists and authoritarian governments slug it out.

Thus one presumes that both Hamas and the Israeli government are happy with the current bloodletting (of Palestinian civilians).